The Black North (14 page)

‘When will it bloody end?' asked Oona. ‘This black mist – just gonna go on and on?'

‘Not mist,' said Merrigutt.

Oona began with a few words, ‘What do you –?' but the rest was lost to a sharp and sudden cough, her whole body making a horror of the sound – a hack like a dull blade against wood.

Merrigutt said, ‘Don't bother speaking. Not here. Keep the mouth closed. No mist I know chokes. Doesn't leave such darkness on you neither.' The jackdaw shook its wings and added more black to the air. ‘No,' said Merrigutt. ‘This is something else, my girl.'

Oona walked, lips bitten in, quietened.

Then came a sound like a thousand thunders, everything shaking and Oona staggering, so unprepared for anything but her slow onward walking. She fell, tumbled and tried to hold tight – to what? Coarse grass shorn low was all her fingers could find.

‘What's happening?' Oona cried.

A low croak from the jackdaw: ‘The remaking of the North.'

The ground beneath Oona began to rear and she recognised the same magic Merrigutt had used to summon their solitary soldier on the approach to Innislone. The jackdaw was in the air then, crying, ‘It's not me doing this bit of magic! Run! Follow my flight!'

Oona's eyes went up: jackdaw in the sky to lead her, the ground was soon a slope to scramble up, and then suddenly there was nothing beneath Oona but a long and surely-to-the-Sorrowful-Lady fatal fall –

‘Just jump!' Merrigutt called.

Oona leapt, and landed on colder and wetter and more barren ground, somersaulting, a smell like ashes clawing at her nostrils, filling her mouth. When she finally came to her stop she was shadowed. Oona looked up.

Like the bog-soldier, a figure towered high. But unlike the bog-soldier too: this one was taller than what Merrigutt had made, a height Oona couldn't compare with anything. Nothing in her life spent between the slopes of Drumbroken valley could have prepared her: to Oona, there, then, the figure was the tallest thing in existence.

Merrigutt returned close but stayed in flight to shout, ‘Don't just lie there – keep going!' Oona crept on palms and knees until she felt far enough away to return to her feet and run.

She couldn't stop a glance back – a raw abyss was left in the ground where the soldier had peeled itself free …

‘I said hurry and stop gawping!' cried Merrigutt, and the jackdaw came closer to pluck at Oona's hand. But Oona had stopped. Ahead, as high as Black sky and in strides half a horizon wide, more figures summoned from the earth were wandering, staggering like things freed from unwanted graves. Arms hanging low, heads dipped, two rough wounds for their eyes shown by what little light was in the sky.

‘Look out!' cried Merrigutt.

The figure Oona had leapt from came stalking up behind and Oona threw herself sideways to avoid it. It passed, with a thud for each step that made her heart tremble and eyes quiver.

‘Muddgloggs,' said Merrigutt, alighting on Oona's shoulder.

‘What?' said Oona. ‘Aren't they the same things as you made at Innislone?'

‘Not a bit of it!' said Merrigutt. ‘This is a more powerful magic than I could ever summon. This is the King's dark work. He's using these Muddgloggs to remake the North. Changing things so much on the Isle that no one will know where they are any more.'

And this, Oona knew, these Muddgloggs – they were the cause of all the stirred-up Black.

She watched as one distant Muddglogg suddenly relented, and fell with the same thunder as Oona had heard minutes before, rejoining the earth. The impact made Oona cower. So what was the fallen Muddglogg then? New hill, new mount? Part, anyway, of a newer landscape.

Merrigutt said, ‘I've been in the North so much of my life, but I don't know how we're going to find our way anywhere now.'

‘Let's keep going,' said Oona. ‘First thing we need to find is that village Billy O'Riley talked about. Might be our only chance, or best chance anyway.'

‘That's if it hasn't been carried off somewhere else,' said Merrigutt.

Oona was saved from reply – some other sound was surrounding them, approaching …

‘What now?' said Merrigutt.

Oona listened. She said, ‘It's singing.' Then listened more: a tune and words she knew too well. She told the jackdaw, ‘It's
The Song of the Divided Isle.
It's the Cause.'

Their song went like this in the near silence –

‘This way,' said Oona. Maybe the Cause would know things, like what had happened to the prisoners taken from the South? The children being taken to the King? Maybe about Morris? Maybe. She listened. Then said, ‘This way here,' and followed –

Her feet met a rise like something only newly dug, disturbed – where one of the Muddgloggs had collapsed, Oona was sure.

‘Be careful now,' said Merrigutt.

Fighting against sinking feet, Oona reached the top of the rise, breathless, and looked down.

‘Is this the White Road?' asked Oona.

‘Used to be,' said Merrigutt.

White was Black – darker smear through dark enough.

‘Won't be any good to follow anyway,' said Merrigutt. ‘Not now with the King remaking so much of the place.'

But it looked like the Cause were for following it: Oona saw shadow and smoke stirred by their slow procession. Their faces were unclear, but Oona couldn't stop herself seeking Morris … no, still too far for spying. She considered the slope that led down to the White-now-Black Road, and wondered.

‘No,' said Merrigutt, knowing well the girl whose shoulder she'd been perched on for many dark miles. ‘You shouldn't go to them.'

‘They might help,' said Oona. ‘Might know.'

‘No! Nothing we can't find out on our own, my girl.'

Oona looked again – the Cause were closer …

‘Stay put for now,' said Merrigutt. ‘I've got a feeling about this lot, and it's not a good one.' Then the Cause were so close they'd soon see Oona.

‘All right then,' she said, and dropped flat to watch, to listen out –

And then at last she saw: the Cause were doing their marching on bare feet, hands holding tight to branches with crimson-coloured rags knotted near the top – the gaudy flags limp, hopeful of some triumphal breeze. Oona noticed that the hands that held the branches were cracked, scabbed, bleeding. But no wound, no worry at all, was going to silence their singing –

Oona saw almost only or mostly just boys. And none looked like her Morris.

‘Look at the state of them!' said Merrigutt. ‘Awful, shameful crowd.'

True: like an amble of cattle with no one as guide, they were moving without much desire or hurry. Their singing sounding more like baying. And their feet were dragging, all cracked and scabbed and bloodied, same way as their hands. How long had they been walking? How many miles? Just following the Black Road, dumbly, numb, in endless circles? Then, a miracle! The Cause stopped as a small gust took one flag and opened it for moments and Oona had to hurry to read –

THE PERPETUAL PARADE TO THE BURREN!

IN HONOUR OF THE NOBLE DEAD!

THE MARCH THAT IS UNENDING FOR THOSE WHO DIED SO THAT

There might've been more, but this was all Oona took before the breeze left and the flag folded. The boys' heads slipped. In unison – they groaned. In unison – resumed
The Song of the Divided Isle
…

Then passing by so close below, Oona knew more – on the back of each boy was another. Another body. And the one being carried did no singing, wasn't moving. Wasn't any longer living.

‘By the Sorrowful Lady,' breathed Merrigutt.

‘Dead,' said Oona. ‘They're carrying the dead ones on their backs.'

‘Why oh why,' said Merrigutt, ‘do men devote such time to such ridiculous tasks? I swear to Herself, now I've seen it all!'

‘We follow them?' said Oona.

‘To the Burren?' said Merrigutt. ‘To the farthest of the far North? No. We do no such thing. I'm making it my business to keep that Stone you're carrying safe, and it won't stay that way for long if we join this lot. And if you don't believe – keep watching.'

As the end of the Perpetual Parade passed, Oona's eyes landed on its last member – a boy who looked more burdened than any of the others. He was hunched lower, though his mouth was wider and his voice louder than any, fervent as anything in his singing. But he was sinking. He trailed a long cloak of coiling dust. And then he could bear weight no longer – the body he was carrying dropped to the Road with a desperate thud.

‘What's happening to him?' asked Oona.

‘Watch for the answer,' said Merrigutt. And Oona did –

The boy shouted the
Song
to his last shout but was soon silenced: slowly dispersing, vanishing, he joined the air as swarming dark, more like cinder and smoke than anything else. The last thing of him to go were words, sung loud –

Then nothing – the boy was gone. Was only –

‘
Echoes
,' whispered Merrigutt.

Before Oona could ask a thing Merrigutt said louder, ‘Look there now!' directing Oona's attention somewhere new. So little in the landscape moved at their level that anything that did demanded attention. A single figure was moving fast. Oona's only thought was – not one of the Cause. Too quick on the move, this one. In too much of a hurry somewhere.

‘Invader?' asked Oona.

‘Not at all,' said Merrigutt. ‘That's a woman.'

‘How do you know?' asked Oona.

‘Because she's got the look of someone with a bit of purpose,' said Merrigutt.

The figure hastening had so much dark settled on (let's say
her
) shoulders, but (
she
?) was batting away at it – futile little jerks of the hand trying to keep (
herself
) cleaner. And she wasn't following the Black Road. She was devoted to a path only she knew.
Perhaps a former road
, Oona thought,
from before the remaking?

Oona watched but the woman soon vanished into dark.

A fresh thunder pressed Oona closer to the ground and she was ready to run this time, ready for the ground to arise, but then something stunning in its ordinariness, so unexpected: it began to rain. Heavy and punishing and loud.

‘Forgot!' said Merrigutt. ‘As well as everything else, they get the worst weather up here!'

‘Is that the King's work too?' said Oona. She had to shout, the downpour was so fierce.

‘No,' said Merrigutt, ‘it's always been this bad!'

‘Maybe that woman is from the village Billy mentioned?' said Oona.

‘Then you've got a choice, my girl,' said Merrigutt.

Oona looked for the Perpetual Parade – they were almost gone, made faint by the rain, continuing on their way North, to the place called the Burren. Would they lead to Morris and the other captured children? Would they even navigate the North at all with so much being remade? Would they survive, escape what had happened to the boy at the back –
the Echoes
?

The sound of their
Song
was soon drowned.

So Oona made her decision: ‘We follow the woman.'

Oona was used to tracking in the forests of Drumbroken but there was no trail left by the woman, no footprint nor mark on the Black, no branch to be broken or trap to be tripped. Instead, Oona had to put her good listening to test. She was sure she heard footfalls falling on harder ground than where she stood. Perhaps on stone? So she followed.

Then Merrigutt, always first to see, saw and said, ‘There's something – not far!' Oona looked, and she just about saw something too –

The land was flat and featureless, and then things formed: many things looming behind rain, tall and trembling and groaning like the trees of Drumbroken did in autumn storms. Oona thought, Forest! Must be! She kept fast-walking, her mother's cloak sodden and the satchel tight in her hands. But before any forest there was suddenly a road of stone underneath Oona's feet, and an archway of stone too – an entrance. The jackdaw left Oona's shoulder and with two hard wing-beats landed at the highest point on the arch. Oona looked up and squinted to read a wooden sign –

THE TOWNSHIP OF LOFTBOROUGH

POPULATION –
243 156
. 43

‘Something in these numbers doesn't warm me,' said Merrigutt, leaning in to examine the sign. Oona didn't reply. She was still reading more. Another torn board, nailed slantways below the first, was telling them –

YOU BETTER BEWARE THAT BLACK BENEATH